Ys and Zelda Mixed at Birth

Recently, I had the pleasure of playing two fantastic games. Both are on hand held systems: Ys Memories of Celceta on the PS Vita and The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS. Wonderful games, both. I started Zelda first. Had fun with it for a couple of days, then started Ys last night. I wanted to keep playing Zelda, mostly, maybe get it done before diving too deeply into Ys. The reason for this is the same reason why I have decided to just forget about Zelda, for now. And the reason is… I just like Ys more.

I get a sense of trepidation whever I think that. I mean, dropping Zelda? ZELDA! For Ys? Dropping a game in a series where grown men cry over a new zelda trailer at E3? A game where every release draws out the fans? A game where it's music feature in it's own concert? It's almost sacrilage. Zelda is good. Great, even! There's no excuse not to play. Not for Ys anyway. Of course, it's a silly thing to beat myself over… but…

But what it…. what if… Zelda is Ys and Ys is Zelda?

The two games are, in a way, polar opposites. Zelda is mostly 75% puzzle solving while Memories of Celceta is about 90% action. Link get stronger by finding power ups, but Adol levels up traditionally, with EXP and better gear. Zelda has tonnes of hidden stuff, but what you see is largely what you get in Ys. Link wears green, Adol is in red. Yet, they have much in common as well. Both heroes are mute. Both have a strong focus on Adventure, Doing Good, Helping People, and Saving the World. But the biggest common denomiator of all is that both series are great!

I first came into contact with the Ys series with the SNES release of Wanderers of Ys (which is Ys III). The game was every thing I had hoped for. Great characters, fast paced gameplay and a great story. My copy was a rental, and in the span of the week, I have beaten the game at least twice. That's how good it was. I enjoyed the game so much that I tried others in the series. Ys VI on the PSP, Ys Book I and II on Virtual Console, the remake of Ys III on the PSP. To be honest, none of those ignited the same reaction from me as Wanderers did. Until Ys Seven, that is. That game now stands as one of my top games of all time. From what I just mentioned, you might be wondering if I really like Ys, given that I barely played them. But the same can be said of my Zelda history. I refuse to touch Majora's Mask because the looping gameplay is a turn off. The DS enteries (Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass) forced players to use the stylus controls, not something I'm fond of. And I barely touched Link's Awakening or the Ages/Seasons games on the Gameboy. If I played more Zelda games than Ys games is only because there were more Zelda releases. The bottom line is, both series are fantastic.

Yet, Zelda is the series with the crying fanboys and the millions of copies sold. Ys is the niche hit which set fires in Japan but hardly a backdraft here in North America.

But what if history was reversed? Imagine an alternate universe out there where the creators of Ys worked for Nintendo while the creators of Zelda plyed at Falcom (Ys' developer, obviously). While Nintendo was busy singlehandedly inventing the console industry as we know it, it would have been Ys released as a golden cartridge while Zelda played on early Japanese PCs. Since both series featured new gameplay, noone without access to a time machine is going to be able to predict how both will turn out in present day, which means that Ys would have just as much chance of taking off in North America as Link did in our current universe. After all, both games played great and share some similarities (and major differences).

In essense, grown men can be crying at the mere sight of a new Adol adventure. Ys games would attract fans with every new release. Concerts would be made out of Ys music. (Incidentally, the music in Ys are some of the best ever in gaming. Here's something I can say with no compromise. The Ys soundtrack is much, much, much better than Zelda's.)

And then, I would be right. In such a world, dropping Zelda for Ys would just be the right thing to do…